How to Respond to Evil
What this moment asks of us, plus, some upcoming ways to work together.
I have a very special newsletter for you today, but before we dip in, some housekeeping:
Thank you to everyone who joined me on Saturday for online office hours—that was powerful.
If you missed it, there are lots of upcoming ways to gather:
On Saturday, February 21st at 10amPT, I’ll be gathering on Zoom for another Office Hours, this time with Uta Opitz, an incredible energy healer. She’s going to offer us a group session: If you’ve never done energy work remotely (or group energy work) you might be surprised. I find it to be more powerful than 1-on-1. Worst case, it’s never a bad idea to close your eyes, breathe deeply, and get flat on your back. (You can find the link to register at the bottom of this email, it’s free for all paid Substack subscribers. If a subscription doesn’t feel affordable right now, shoot me a line and I will comp you.)
On Saturday, March 7th at 6pmPT Godmothers in Montecito, I’ll be interviewing Jamie Rose, author of Facing Madame X: The Tools for Women.
I’ll be doing another Pulling the Thread Office Hours on Zoom on Saturday, March 21st at 10amPT with Mark Horn: I’ll share the link to register at the end of the month, but save the date now—this will likely run for 90 minutes. He’ll be teaching us Tarot + Kabbalah via a simple card spread. (You can watch our first workshop here; you can read more about Mark Horn here; you can listen to our podcast episode here; and you can book a one-on-one session with him here.)
I will be in Omaha, on April 14th at 7pm to be in conversation with renowned Holocaust historian Debórah Dwork at the Strauss Performing Arts Center. We will be discussing her book Saints and Liars along with this moment in time. Tickets are free, but please RSVP.
(Both Uta and Mark are listed on my Healers page; they are both wonderful!)
Come work with me at Omega in May!
And FINALLY, I’ll be sharing more about this in the weeks and months to come, but Satya Doyle Byock and I are co-leading an in-person retreat at Omega in Rhinebeck, New York from May 25-29. The itinerary is coming together (I know some of you have asked for more specifics) and we will be sharing soon, but the goal is to spend time in community (and in nature) helping you figure out what wants to come through you—what your dharma, your gifts might be—and how to structure those gifts in the world. If you’re looking for a time-out to tap in and get yourself spiritually and emotionally organized, this will be your workshop. If you’re looking for a chance to be with people but also to be with yourself, this will be your workshop. We’d love to see you there! You can register through Omega right here.
Okay, here we go.
We are experiencing an eruption of shadow: Another name for this is, of course, evil. Human evil. Years ago, Carissa Schumacher said that we are entering an Era of Transparency—I have no doubt that this will continue to unfold (I worry that we are only in the first few lines of the first act of this play). It is more important than ever that we learn how to modulate and respond to evil—and its propensity to overwhelm—so as not to be subsumed by it.
I did a series on evil several years ago, focusing on the work of Sufi mystic Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, which I will be resurfacing and resharing in the weeks to come. I’ve also been engaged in an ongoing conversation with Thomas Hübl on the podcast about shadow, evil, and its integration. More to come from all.
Essential points to remember: Evil lies, and evil feeds on fear. We are all capable of resonating with evil, too, as it’s not foreign to any of us (in fact, insisting that it’s separate or “over there,” is part of our collective problem). To keep yourself safe and in a field of consonance, it’s important to remember this: You need to keep your vibration high. I know it sounds new age-y, but it’s very important.
One of the wisest people I know in this space is Carla Schwiderski, a Brazilian energy healer who works with her parents Maria and Francisco in a practice called AuraCare. Previously, she did a piece with me about resonance and vibration which is a must read: “The Law of Resonance.” And then she offered us this: “The Anatomy of Self-Healing.”
Carla understands darkness; she intimately knows of what she speaks. And she also knows how to do this work while keeping herself safe, and without inspiring fear or shocking the nervous system of those she works with. We’ve been in constant touch in the last few weeks about what’s emerging and she offered the below, which I think is a pretty profound and gorgeous distillation of what’s required from all of us.
This, to me, is one of its main nuts:
And it is here that the spiritual question of our time arises:
How do I avoid becoming what I denounce?
Because evil does not perpetuate itself only through explicit action,
but through the unconscious reproduction
of its very same forces.
It is possible to fight violence
and violate oneself internally.
To defend victims
and intoxicate oneself with hatred.
To speak of light
while operating at the same frequency as shadow.
Shadow does not win by force,
but when it pulls the being out of its center
and contaminates it.
I hope this offering from Carla helps. Please forward it to anyone who might need it right now.
See you next week.
xx
The Revelation of Evil as a Call to Lucidity: Trials, expiation, and the maturation of consciousness
by Carla Schwiderski
I — THE CALL
The maturity of the spirit in a time of trial
Perhaps the strength of this era does not reveal itself through heroic gestures.
Perhaps it reveals itself through the maturity of the spirit.
It is not loud.
It is not impulsive.
It is not defined by opposition, but by the capacity to sustain consciousness within duality.
It reveals itself in the ability to observe without becoming contaminated,
to feel without becoming destabilized,
to act without abandoning the inner axis.
For remaining whole today
is a more complex task
than simply reacting to the world.
And perhaps this is the essential learning of our time:
to educate one’s own consciousness while moving through the trial.
Knowing that no inner choice is neutral,
but rather vibrates, organizes, or disorganizes,
and reverberates throughout the collective field we all share.
Consciousness does not mature through the denial of reality,
but through the quality of presence sustained in the face of it.
Anchoring Thought:
Spiritual maturity begins when the being stops seeking answers outside
and learns to sustain coherence within.
Question for You:
In which moments of your life did you react
when you could have remained whole?
II — THE REVELATION
When the shadow ceases to be subterranean
Darkness has never been so visible.
Not because it was born now,
but because it can no longer hide.
The traces of the shadow cross screens, headlines, reports, documents placed before our eyes.
Normalized violence.
Revealed abuses.
Wounded children.
Silenced women.
Structures of power that, when illuminated, reveal deep fractures between discourse and practice.
It is as if a subterranean world, one that has always existed
had been projected onto the surface,
without filters,
without veils,
without preparation.
And perhaps that is why it hurts more.
Not because darkness is new,
but because it now comes too close to our fields.
The true impact does not lie only in the exposed facts,
but in the way they cross the human field continuously,
without time for digestion,
without space for integration.
We are not merely witnessing collapse.
We are being traversed by it.
When the shadow ceases to be distant,
it ceases to be a concept
and becomes a felt experience.
Anchoring Thought:
Revelation is not the end of illusion
it is the beginning of responsibility.
Question for You:
What within you contracts when shadow appears in the world?
And what within you remains lucid?
III — THE IMPACT ON THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL FIELD
When consciousness is crossed by hyper exposure
We are living in a time of moral, emotional, and sensory hyper exposure.
The pain of the world no longer reaches us filtered by distance,
as it once did for our grandparents.
We carry it in our pockets.
We wake up with it.
We live alongside it.
We fall asleep with it etched into the retina,
into the body, into the field,
into the nervous system.
And the body does not respond as it would to information.
It responds as it would to a present threat.
Because the incarnated spirit feels in the body
what has not yet been elaborated in consciousness.
We are a body under trial.
Perception in learning.
Emotion in an educational process.
A field in constant reorganization.
What we see, hear, and absorb
does not remain only in the mind.
It crosses the nervous system.
It reconfigures the emotional field.
It impacts the energetic body.
That is why it hurts more.
Not because darkness has increased,
but because collapse occurs
when the body can no longer distinguish
information from lived experience.
When our system does not find pauses,
consciousness loses its capacity to symbolize,
and everything begins to be lived as urgency.
The ocean does not retain all the debris that passes through it.
It returns what it cannot integrate
and holds, in silence, its deep currents.
Not out of rejection,
but out of a sacred instinct of preservation.
So too does lucid consciousness:
it allows what cannot be metabolized to pass,
so that the center may remain intact.
Silent Exercise:
Pause for three slow breaths.
Observe:
— Where is your body tense?
— Where does it ask for rest?
Do not change anything. Simply recognize.
IV — THE INITIATORY CORE
Where true spiritual work begins
This is where true spiritual work begins:
not in avoiding the world,
but in learning how to move through it
without allowing it to disorganize the vibration that sustains the being.
Fear.
Anger.
Indignation.
Repulsion.
Sadness.
These reactions belong to the human condition.
They are not moral failures.
They are natural responses to the impact of reality.
Spirituality does not deny emotion.
It teaches how to educate it.
These emotions do not inhabit the same level of consciousness.
Each one imprints a specific signature on the field of being,
contracting or expanding perception,
narrowing or widening presence.
Fear and repulsion compress the vital field.
They close the field, they close the body.
They reduce the horizon of consciousness to immediate survival.
Anger and indignation carry more energy.
They are forces of mobilization.
But when uneducated, they become unstable,
displace the inner axis,
and imprison the being in reaction.
Sadness draws energy inward.
When crossed with presence,
it can mature consciousness.
When inhabited without elaboration,
it can silence inner life.
None of these emotions define the being.
What defines the level of consciousness
is the degree of sovereignty with which the spirit sustains them
without confusing itself with them.
Spiritual maturity is the ability to sustain dense states
without allowing them to become identity,
narrative,
or destiny.
It is here that the teaching of Jesus becomes profoundly current:
“Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.”
Not as an invitation to passivity,
but to inner responsibility.
To watch is to sustain lucidity over one’s own field
in the face of the disturbances of the human world.
To pray is to align thought, feeling, and action
with the highest possible consciousness.
It is to recover the axis.
It is to prevent duality from dragging us into fragmentation.
Emotion felt with presence matures.
Emotion felt without consciousness governs.
And it is here that the spiritual question of our time arises:
How do I avoid becoming what I denounce?
Because evil does not perpetuate itself only through explicit action,
but through the unconscious reproduction
of its very same forces.
It is possible to fight violence
and violate oneself internally.
To defend victims
and intoxicate oneself with hatred.
To speak of light
while operating at the same frequency as shadow.
Shadow does not win by force,
but when it pulls the being out of its center
and contaminates it.
Anchoring Thought:
Emotion is not the enemy of consciousness.
It is raw material.
Question for You:
Am I feeling this
with presence,
or am I being governed by it?
V — THE LAW OF THIS INCARNATION
Trials, expiation, and reincarnational responsibility
Spiritism names this time with clarity:
we are living in a world of trials and expiations.
Not a world of punishment,
but of education of consciousness.
Expiation is not suffering for the sake of suffering.
It is a reunion with consequence.
It is reincarnational responsibility.
The spirit learns, through contrast, what it is not,
in order to remember its origin.
The revelation of evil does not occur to crush us.
It occurs to summon us
to a higher level of lucidity.
Duality does not exist to push us into collapse,
but to teach us discernment.
We are incarnated in a three-dimensional reality:
dense, profoundly human,
radically marked by duality.
Here, empathetic and lucid consciousnesses coexist
alongside wounded, fragmented consciousnesses,
disconnected from their origin.
This is not a flaw of the world.
It is the curriculum of the spirit.
Saint Augustine, speaking as a spirit, synthesized this law with precision:
“Know thyself, and thou shalt know the universe and the gods.”
Without self-knowledge, we project shadow.
With self-knowledge, we learn not to replicate it.
Integrated Spiritist Thought:
A trial does not come to punish the spirit,
but to reveal the degree of lucidity it is already able to sustain.
Question for You:
What is this experience trying to educate in you,
not merely correct?
VI — THE RESET
The passage from observer to field stabilizer
There comes a point when discernment is no longer enough.
There comes a point when regulation alone no longer suffices.
Consciousness is then called to change its function.
Until now, the being observed the world.
Now, it sustains it.
This time no longer demands analysis.
It demands ontological positioning.
It is no longer about choosing what to see
or filtering what to feel.
It is about inhabiting a point of consciousness
from which the world does not invade.
There is a level at which reality ceases to be something that happens
and becomes something that resonates
from where you are standing.
At that level, evil is not fought.
It finds no surface upon which to inscribe itself.
Not because it has disappeared,
but because there is no available field for it to organize itself.
This is the true reset:
when consciousness stops reacting to form
and begins to anchor order before form.
Here, the being no longer asks:
“How should I act?”
It asks:
“From where am I existing?”
And that question, silently,
reorganizes everything.
VII — THE NEW FUNCTION OF THE INCARNATED SPIRIT
Not to interpret the world—but to stabilize it
From this point on, the world is no longer something to be understood.
It is something to be sustained through presence.
Mature consciousness does not attempt to correct the Earth.
It prevents the Earth from collapsing within itself.
This is service at its highest degree.
It is not emotional charity.
It is not spiritual militancy.
It is not discourse, nor pedagogy.
It is field.
Each human being begins to operate, consciously or not,
as a point of stabilization
or as a point of rupture.
There is no vibrational neutrality.
Incarnated consciousness, when whole,
acts as an element of structural coherence
within an unstable reality.
When fragmented,
it amplifies precisely the disorder it seeks to fight.
That is why this time does not call for saviors of the world.
It calls for human structures capable of sustaining tension without disorganizing.
We are not called to save the world,
but to not become part of the collapse.
That is already much.
That is already rare.
That is already service.
Inner silence.
Steady presence.
Simple gestures.
An ordered life.
The extraordinary does not lie in doing more.
It lies in not breaking.
Those who remain whole
do not illuminate the world through discourse.
They reduce the density of reality
simply by existing.
And this generates no applause.
No followers.
No narrative.
It generates invisible stability.
This is the new place.
It is not heroic.
It is not beautiful.
It is not exalted.
But it is necessary.
This time does not ask for heroes.
It asks for guardians of the axis.
It does not ask for loud voices.
It asks for stable consciousnesses.
To remain whole today
is an advanced spiritual act.
It is here that the incarnated spirit
fulfills its most silent
and most decisive function.
Closing Thought:
The world does not need more opinions.
It needs human fields that do not collapse.
Final Question for You:
Does my presence today
organize
or densify the field around me?
P.S. — A NECESSARY ADDENDUM
Let us protect our children.
They do not yet know how to defend their own field.
They absorb before they understand.
They mirror before they discern.
The world that surrounds them: sounds, images, words, tensions
silently writes the architecture of who they will become.
Before going to sleep, ask yourself:
“Was the environment I sustained today
habitable for a child?”
Protection is not excessive surveillance.
It is not control.
It is not fear.
Protection is sustaining a field so coherent
that life can rest without contracting.
Evil does not enter only through extreme acts.
It enters through normalized distractions.
Through haste.
Through absence.
Through the adult who has lost their own center
and calls this maturity.
Practice good.
But not as a slogan.
Practice good as atmosphere.
Begin where your presence truly has power:
within your core,
within your home,
within the space where your energy touches life daily.
No collective transformation
is stronger than the silent coherence
of a small, well-cared-for world.
Do not distance yourself from your nature.
It is wiser than the noise that tries to replace it.
Learn to outmaneuver distractions
that fragment feeling
and steal the capacity to remain whole.
Open space for contemplation
as a ritual of return.
Contemplation is an ancient intelligence.
It elevates.
It restores.
Ask yourself, with radical honesty:
Does this distract me?
Or does it sanctify me?
What sanctifies is not what appears elevated,
but what aligns.
Seek knowledge.
True knowledge liberates.
Use the filter of reason.
Do not abandon intuition.
It is the language of the body
when the soul is listening.
Discernment is born
when knowing, feeling, and presence
finally walk together.
Your greatest tool is conscious autonomy,
which emerges when knowledge
becomes embodied posture.
Reconnect with the body.
It is the first temple.
Observe sensations.
Listen to emotions.
Invite your thoughts and emotions
to sit at the table.
Offer them tea.
Observe them with presence,
as one welcomes a friend.
Ritualize existence.
Not out of superstition,
but out of respect for the life moving through you.
Respect your limits.
They are sacred boundaries,
not weaknesses.
When a being lives this way,
they do not only protect themselves.
They protect the field around them.
And where there is a protected field,
life, especially life that is still growing
can flourish without fear.
This is the commitment.
Silent.
Intimate.
Unavoidable.
Gratitude for being here, with an open heart, sustaining presence in a time that asks us for wholeness.
With a warm and fraternal embrace, from Carla, Mama, Francisco and from all the greater spiritual presence that surrounds and sustains us.
May you feel held, accompanied, and deeply loved as you continue walking your path.
We move forward together, tending the axis with love and consciousness.